Supergirl: Easter Eggs and Things You Might Have Missed In “Survivors”

Better late than never, eh, team?

While away visiting the sets of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and more this week in Vancouver, ComicBook.com’s resident Easter egg hunter will be turning in some of these stories a bit on the tardy side. Apologies, but if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing a little later and right, rather than a little earlier and not as good.

The episode, like this week, took place over Halloween and gave us plenty of cool stuff to look at. An alien fight club brought us faces from the comics both familiar and obscure, while closer examination yielded even more to find.

So…what did we see? What did we miss? Read on, and comment below.

Supergirl airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

THE PRINCE

Before it was clear that it was Mon-El who would be in the pod, there were widespread rumors that the pod’s inhabitant would be an alien prince.

While that turned out not to be the case…it was pretty close. The prince, earmarked for survival on board the pod, gave himself up to go down like a captain with the metaphorical ship of his world and sent his loyal bodyguard to Earth instead.

MISS MARTIAN

While TV audiences were likely taken aback at the end of last night’s episode (this writer watched it in a room full of other entertainment journalists, many of whom gasped or otherwise expressed surprise), comic book fans likely already knew why Miss Martian didn’t want to accept J’Onn’s offer of a bond.

M’gan wasn’t rescued by a White Martian who refused a kill order. She was that White Martian. Just like in the comics.

Even once she’s “out” as a Martian, M’gan elects to stay green since her race were so vicious and bloodthirsty, and hunted the Green Martians to near extinction.

NOONAN’S

Noonan’s may not have made an appearance yet this season on Supergirl, but that doesn’t mean the joint has gone out of business.

Cat Grant’s favorite coffee-and-lunch place, named for a dive bar created in the pages of Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman comics, snuck in a cameo in the form of Snapper Carr’s to-go cup this week.

JAWS

“We’re gonna need a bigger block,” quips Winn when Mon-El takes out a series of concrete bricks during his training at the DEO.

That, of course, is a reference to Jaws, with its memorable line “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Ironically, right now Supergirl is shooting an episode directed by filmmaker Kevin Smith, well known for his fascination with Jaws, which he references often. In Smith’s first feature film, Clerks, one of his characters actually said “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

ROULETTE

Created in 2001 by Geoff Johns and Rags Morales, Roulette is primarily known as a villain to the Justice Society of America, who will be appearing on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow on The CW but not, as far as we know, on Supergirl this season.

Veronica Sinclair runs a gambling establishment for super-villains where they can bet on events such as captive superhero death-matches. She generally manages to make superheroes work for her by using chips that essentially hypnotize or program them into compliance. The controls are apparently auditory in nature, as they failed to control a number of former Justice League International members after Fire — whose native tongue is Portugese — was not taken under by them and managed to de-program the rest of the team.

Some fans expected Roulette to show up during the “Truth” storyline when a mostly-depowered Superman, wearing his t-shirt costume and with his identity compromised, joined up with a metahuman fight club — but she didn’t have any clear involvement with the club and hasn’t been seen since Flashpoint, as far as we can tell.

Besides the JSA, Roulette faced off the the Super Buddies (that team of former JLI members) and has appeared in Justice League United and Smallville. In Smallville, the “fight club” element of her character was replaced by the use of mind control to force enhanced individuals to kill for her. She convinced Green Arrow to make an attempt on Lois Lane and Toyman to go after Tess Mercer.

DRAAGA

Draaga was an alien gladiator who did battle on Warworld at the order of Mongul, the traveling planet’s despotic leader.

The character first appeared during Superman’s self-imposed Exile in Space; at one point, the Man of Steel ran out of oxygen and was floating in space when he was picked up by Warworld and forced into combat. Draaga was the long-reigning champion of Warworld.

When Superman defeated him and refused to kill him, the result was twofold: it was taken as dishonoring both Draaga, who then dedicated himself to hunting down Superman so that he could demand a rematch and either kill him or be killed; and Warworld, for which Mongul attempted to punish Superman as well.

Draaga would square off against a version of Superman who was in the thrall of a Kryptonian entity known as The Eradicator…

Eventually, Draaga would fight alongside Superman and a version of Supergirl against Brainiac, which would lead to Draaga’s death. Supergirl, at that time a shapeshifting entity known as Matrix, would take on Draaga’s form for the duration of the battle and fight for his name and honor.

TALL BUILDINGS

It seems as though Daxamites — who in the comics are basically Kryptonians, except weak to lead instead of Kryptonite — are here basically Golden Age Kryptonians.

Among his powers? Mon-El is strong (but not as strong as Supergirl), invulnerable, and can leap incredible distances — as Winn tells him, “like ‘tall buildings in a single bound’ kinda stuff.”

That, of course, is a nod to one of the earliest slogans associated with Superman — that he can “leap tall buildings in a single bound.” While the expression became outmoded when Superman started to fly instead of leaping, it’s undeniably catchy, and so retained a lot of its cultural cache.

VALOR

Anybody care to guess what Mon-El’s costume and superhero identity are going to be?

A safe bet is on Valor, the character Mon-El has been on and off for decades (in between being simply Mon-El).

CHIEF

In another nod to classic Superman stories, Kara refers to Snapper Carr as “chief.”

That, of course, is the name given to Daily Planet Editor-in-Chief Perry White by any number of reporters and photographers over the years.

Unlike Perry, Snapper did not cut Kara off to tell her she shouldn’t call him by that name.

“ALL YOU DO…”

This idea that many aliens — particularly the ones that don’t look human — have a rough go at living a normal life is something that Supergirl has touched on a couple of times, but it’s not unique to her.

It’s been mentioned at least in passing in DC and Marvel books over the years, with Magneto using such a philosophy as it pertains to mutants for a recruitment pitch and a rationalization of his behavior.

In Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon, the third (and at least up to this point final) OverLord had a similar philosophy, and acted as though his Vicious Circle goons were less criminals and more desperate freaks who couldn’t live any other kind of life.

SCOTT KLEIN

Scott Klein, Kara Danvers’s unfortunate prom date, is likely named after a former editor on The Vampire Diaries of the same name.

He left The CW a while ago and is currently working on Emerald City.

LISBETH SALANDER

Lisbeth Salander, the character to whom Lena Luthor compares Roulette’s tattoos, is in fact the titular Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in Stieg Larsson’s wildly popular series of crime novels.

WARWORLD

As mentioned earlier, Warworld is a planet-sized craft capable of moving under its own power and doing untold damage.

Originally run by Mongul, Warworld fell under Draaga’s control following Mongul’s defeat by Superman, and later it became part of Brainiac’s attack force against Earth in the story Panic in the Sky!.

Besides being the place audiences first met Draaga, an attempt to create a second Warworld for Mongul after he lost the original to Brainiac resulted in the destruction of Coast City at the hands of Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman.